Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Addressing Claims of Herbicide in Orange Juice
Moms Across America turns their slander machine on orange juice producers, seeking to harm an industry that it currently fighting for its survival. Here's how farmers, scientists and concerned citizens can counter that information. The article appears in Citrus Industry
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Amazon Deletes Review, Protects Bottom Line
I used to really trust Amazon. Product reviews were important because you could see who was a verified purchaser, and then use their guidance to aid in decisions. Not anymore.
Amazon is now in the business of deleting reviews that could affect their corporate bottom line. This sort of smacks of conspiracy, but it makes sense.
The book "Whitewash" by Carey Gillam was released last week. Gillam is a vicious anti-biotech activist that has distorted the truth and outright lied about science for over a decade. I have not read the book, but I will. I suspect it is more of her nonsense.
In summary:
1. A middle-school teacher from Maryland buys a copy, reads it, and writes a review. It compliments Gillam on her writing and then is scientifically critical of the content, providing point-by-point analysis.
2. Gillam rebuts his comments, says that he just works for Monsanto.
3. Amazon pulls the review.
Backstory:
1. Gillam writes for the activist organization US-RTK. She also writes this book.
2. Glowing reviews of the book by her US-RTK employers remain on the website without disclosure.
3. US-RTK is financed by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a morally bankrupt anti-biotech organization that finances US-RTK, who pays Gillam, who trashes conventional farming.
4. If OCA, RTK, Gillam can manipulate the public into fearing conventional farming, interest in Whole Foods goes up.
5. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon.
6. So Amazon profits from censoring objective, scientific reviews of non-scientific claims.
I don't normally think conspiratorially, but consider that Gillam and US-RTK have hammered me and other scientists for tenuous, non-financial relationships with [Big Corporation]. Here industry groups pay her via USRTK to publish weak claims (actually since this book was in development the wheels of many arguments have come off) that target conventional farming.
Who are the real paid industry shills?
Amazon is now in the business of deleting reviews that could affect their corporate bottom line. This sort of smacks of conspiracy, but it makes sense.
The book "Whitewash" by Carey Gillam was released last week. Gillam is a vicious anti-biotech activist that has distorted the truth and outright lied about science for over a decade. I have not read the book, but I will. I suspect it is more of her nonsense.
I don't agree with everything Stephan Niedenbach says and does, but this review is consistent with the science behind the chemistry, and the track record of Carey Gillam. It was removed from Amazon's reviews of the book to ensure the slander of conventional farming and more profits for Whole Foods/Amazon.
In summary:
1. A middle-school teacher from Maryland buys a copy, reads it, and writes a review. It compliments Gillam on her writing and then is scientifically critical of the content, providing point-by-point analysis.
2. Gillam rebuts his comments, says that he just works for Monsanto.
3. Amazon pulls the review.
Backstory:
1. Gillam writes for the activist organization US-RTK. She also writes this book.
2. Glowing reviews of the book by her US-RTK employers remain on the website without disclosure.
3. US-RTK is financed by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a morally bankrupt anti-biotech organization that finances US-RTK, who pays Gillam, who trashes conventional farming.
4. If OCA, RTK, Gillam can manipulate the public into fearing conventional farming, interest in Whole Foods goes up.
5. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon.
6. So Amazon profits from censoring objective, scientific reviews of non-scientific claims.
I don't normally think conspiratorially, but consider that Gillam and US-RTK have hammered me and other scientists for tenuous, non-financial relationships with [Big Corporation]. Here industry groups pay her via USRTK to publish weak claims (actually since this book was in development the wheels of many arguments have come off) that target conventional farming.
Who are the real paid industry shills?
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Moms Against America Targets OJ
For several years now I've discussed why you should never trust Moms Against America. The organization is run by Zen Honeycutt, someone with zero scientific training that makes a living by harming farmers and indicting scientists that work for public good. She also is against vaccination and raises money to fund billboards mom-shaming parents into buying organic food.
Now she has set her target on orange producers, and I'm officially abandoning my gentle persuasion and as we say in the hockey arena, I'm "dropping the gloves".
This report is inexcusable, it is disgusting and it harms an industry that is already collapsing. What is she trying to do?
Zen Honeycutt has a history of falsifying information to advance her agenda of scaring parents away from food. In the past she has promoted knowingly forged data on residues on corn and also promoted highly suspect data about glyphosate in breast milk, a claim that was shown to not be supported by scientists that study contents of breast milk.
She now targets orange juice, a key component of the American diet, a much needed daily serving of fruit in a world of caffeinated energy drinks.
A Fruit Crop is Dying
Aside from the shift away from fruit juice due to market forces and cultural trends, the Florida citrus crop is dying from citrus greening, a disease driving the industry into ruin. Production is at 50% of what it was a short time ago. Solutions are in the works at many levels.
Then Hurricane Irma then stripped the trees of a lot of what was left. his was a devastating year for our growers.
So here Zen Honeycutt takes on an industry that is supplying an important fruit serving. The crop is dying, the situation is critical, and she screams that a "probable carcinogen" is in your OJ.
FIRST.
Carcinogen?
Honeycutt certainly accepts the lone IARC decision of "probable carcinogen" ignoring the dozens of independent evaluations by many countries, and the scientific literature that says there is no strong evidence for carcinogenicty.
The lead scientist in this determination was paid $160,000 and hired lawyers to start suing the manufacturer of Roundup before the decision was even rendered, so this looks like a clear pay-to-smear set of allegations.
The IARC decision is counter to every other government, company (many companies manufacture it, each has done their own tests), and academic assessment of glyphosate, they did not find reason for concern. (and FYI, the IARC says alcohol and grilled meat are known carcinogens)
Claimed Levels?
The numbers they present, if true, which they likely are not based on Honeycutt's trend of presenting false data, are far below any risky levels. 5 parts per billion is five seconds in 32 years.
Methods?
They also don't show a non-glyphosate control. There are plenty of places growing OJ without glyphosate. While the claimed LC/MS-MS method is a good way to measure glyphosate, what is the background level in non-glyphosate treated plants? What else elutes at the same time? No controls, just numbers to scare. Claims in the MAM Article The verbiage presented around the claimed presence is a sick distortion of the scientific literature.
Not only is the work cited typically suspect (it appears she's resting on the highly criticized work by Kruger and Seneff), other conclusions are twisted. For instance she claims, "1 part per trillion has been shown to stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells." She neglects to mention that this is in a Petri dish. Glyphosate is a water-soluble molecule. It is applied in parts per million and even if you consumed it, it would move through the body in stools and urine. I discussed glyphosate pharmacokinetics with a toxicologist/physician on my podcast.
The Lab that Did the Work
And the work was done by John Fagan (signed off on the bottom) long time anti-GMO crusader. Independent lab? Hardly. Fagan is recognized as a Raja of the Global Country of World Peace with Global Responsibility for Food Purity and Invincibility and Minister of Agriculture in the Maharishi Movement.
How he fits that on a business card I'll never know.
Fagan has a long career dedicated to finding stuff at the edge of nothing, and then using those claims to instill fear about food. He was the founder of Genetic ID (a GE crop identification project) and was an early board member of the Non-GMO Project.
No controls, no published methods, from an activist lab -- This would never be accepted by peer-reviewed literature, which is why it is only on an activist website with a history of lying to the public.
Accompanying Video
I have to ask myself, is she completely obvious or knowingly lying? The video is a clueless rant that ignores everything known about glyphosate and even fundamental science.
She claims that glyphosate gets into oranges because it is taken up by the roots, when we know that it is not taken up well at all. She says they didn't test organic orange juice because they wanted to test only the top brands. My guess is that they "found" it in organic too (there's likely a product at the same place as glyphosate that they willingly misinterpret, again, without that control, who knows?).
She also continues the same bogus claims, like glyphosate is found in rain. A claim long debunked by me!
Motivation
The bottom line is that Zen Honeycutt wants to harm American Farming. She lives in a delusional bubble of happy farms where immigrants toil in the hot sun to remove the weeds to ensure she gets her high-priced food that has other residues that can't hurt you either.
This is more anti-glyphosate tripe. The tip off-- they keep calling it Monsanto's roundup. Few citrus growers use Roundup. They use glyphosate. The generic is much cheaper, so they use that. It is not made by Monsanto, it is made by one of dozens of other companies.
Honeycutt must Monsantoize this to invoke fear of technology, fear of safe, good fruit products-- or more importantly, connect the bogus data to Monsanto.
And to the Orange Juice Industry...
This is exactly why I hate that all of the major brands capitulated to labeling orange juice "Non-GMO". There are no genetically engineered oranges, at least none other than those in greenhouses and behind barbed wire that look perfectly fine in the presence of disease pressure. The food activists are horrible people that lie to the public with the intention of harming industries. Now they have targeted orange juice. Sorry about that.
The best move would be to make strong statements about the safe use of herbicides in the industry, the likely bogus data here, and the fact that if it was true, the levels are below inconsequential.
Silver Lining
As time goes on Honeycutt is recognized more and more as a crackpot activist that has a clearly rotten agenda. She is generally recognized as someone that will falsify data for her cause and ignore science that does not agree with her interpretations.
She also is glad to attack scientists like Shelley McGuire, and silence them (like she did me by blocking and erasing my soft, scientific comments) when they engage questions on her website.
Conclusion
More alarmist bullshit from known data fabricators and questionable laboratories, this time sadly targeting a crippled industry to continue their crusade against a company that sells corn and soybean seeds.
I'm glad this story hit with a whimper and didn't get much interest.
Now she has set her target on orange producers, and I'm officially abandoning my gentle persuasion and as we say in the hockey arena, I'm "dropping the gloves".
This report is inexcusable, it is disgusting and it harms an industry that is already collapsing. What is she trying to do?
From her comfortable well-appointed home in California, Zen Honeycutt, someone demonstrated to lie about science, attacks an industry that is taking a beating from disease and hurricanes.
Zen Honeycutt has a history of falsifying information to advance her agenda of scaring parents away from food. In the past she has promoted knowingly forged data on residues on corn and also promoted highly suspect data about glyphosate in breast milk, a claim that was shown to not be supported by scientists that study contents of breast milk.
She now targets orange juice, a key component of the American diet, a much needed daily serving of fruit in a world of caffeinated energy drinks.
A Fruit Crop is Dying
Aside from the shift away from fruit juice due to market forces and cultural trends, the Florida citrus crop is dying from citrus greening, a disease driving the industry into ruin. Production is at 50% of what it was a short time ago. Solutions are in the works at many levels.
Then Hurricane Irma then stripped the trees of a lot of what was left. his was a devastating year for our growers.
So here Zen Honeycutt takes on an industry that is supplying an important fruit serving. The crop is dying, the situation is critical, and she screams that a "probable carcinogen" is in your OJ.
FIRST.
- The weed killer glyphosate is used to clear space around trees and in row middles-- because it is safe.
- It is a foliar herbicide, meaning it must be applied to leaves to work. It is not well take up by roots.
- If it was taken up by the tree, the tree would die.
- For over 30 years glyphosate has been a safe way to manage weeds that compete for limited water and nutrients. It still works great in orange groves.
Carcinogen?
Honeycutt certainly accepts the lone IARC decision of "probable carcinogen" ignoring the dozens of independent evaluations by many countries, and the scientific literature that says there is no strong evidence for carcinogenicty.
The lead scientist in this determination was paid $160,000 and hired lawyers to start suing the manufacturer of Roundup before the decision was even rendered, so this looks like a clear pay-to-smear set of allegations.
The IARC decision is counter to every other government, company (many companies manufacture it, each has done their own tests), and academic assessment of glyphosate, they did not find reason for concern. (and FYI, the IARC says alcohol and grilled meat are known carcinogens)
Claimed Levels?
The numbers they present, if true, which they likely are not based on Honeycutt's trend of presenting false data, are far below any risky levels. 5 parts per billion is five seconds in 32 years.
Methods?
They also don't show a non-glyphosate control. There are plenty of places growing OJ without glyphosate. While the claimed LC/MS-MS method is a good way to measure glyphosate, what is the background level in non-glyphosate treated plants? What else elutes at the same time? No controls, just numbers to scare. Claims in the MAM Article The verbiage presented around the claimed presence is a sick distortion of the scientific literature.
Not only is the work cited typically suspect (it appears she's resting on the highly criticized work by Kruger and Seneff), other conclusions are twisted. For instance she claims, "1 part per trillion has been shown to stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells." She neglects to mention that this is in a Petri dish. Glyphosate is a water-soluble molecule. It is applied in parts per million and even if you consumed it, it would move through the body in stools and urine. I discussed glyphosate pharmacokinetics with a toxicologist/physician on my podcast.
The Lab that Did the Work
And the work was done by John Fagan (signed off on the bottom) long time anti-GMO crusader. Independent lab? Hardly. Fagan is recognized as a Raja of the Global Country of World Peace with Global Responsibility for Food Purity and Invincibility and Minister of Agriculture in the Maharishi Movement.
How he fits that on a business card I'll never know.
Fagan has a long career dedicated to finding stuff at the edge of nothing, and then using those claims to instill fear about food. He was the founder of Genetic ID (a GE crop identification project) and was an early board member of the Non-GMO Project.
No controls, no published methods, from an activist lab -- This would never be accepted by peer-reviewed literature, which is why it is only on an activist website with a history of lying to the public.
Accompanying Video
I have to ask myself, is she completely obvious or knowingly lying? The video is a clueless rant that ignores everything known about glyphosate and even fundamental science.
She claims that glyphosate gets into oranges because it is taken up by the roots, when we know that it is not taken up well at all. She says they didn't test organic orange juice because they wanted to test only the top brands. My guess is that they "found" it in organic too (there's likely a product at the same place as glyphosate that they willingly misinterpret, again, without that control, who knows?).
She also continues the same bogus claims, like glyphosate is found in rain. A claim long debunked by me!
Motivation
The bottom line is that Zen Honeycutt wants to harm American Farming. She lives in a delusional bubble of happy farms where immigrants toil in the hot sun to remove the weeds to ensure she gets her high-priced food that has other residues that can't hurt you either.
This is more anti-glyphosate tripe. The tip off-- they keep calling it Monsanto's roundup. Few citrus growers use Roundup. They use glyphosate. The generic is much cheaper, so they use that. It is not made by Monsanto, it is made by one of dozens of other companies.
Honeycutt must Monsantoize this to invoke fear of technology, fear of safe, good fruit products-- or more importantly, connect the bogus data to Monsanto.
835 shares. About what? False data manufactured by people known to fake data.
Why would anyone trust them with their family's health?
And to the Orange Juice Industry...
This is exactly why I hate that all of the major brands capitulated to labeling orange juice "Non-GMO". There are no genetically engineered oranges, at least none other than those in greenhouses and behind barbed wire that look perfectly fine in the presence of disease pressure. The food activists are horrible people that lie to the public with the intention of harming industries. Now they have targeted orange juice. Sorry about that.
The best move would be to make strong statements about the safe use of herbicides in the industry, the likely bogus data here, and the fact that if it was true, the levels are below inconsequential.
Silver Lining
As time goes on Honeycutt is recognized more and more as a crackpot activist that has a clearly rotten agenda. She is generally recognized as someone that will falsify data for her cause and ignore science that does not agree with her interpretations.
She also is glad to attack scientists like Shelley McGuire, and silence them (like she did me by blocking and erasing my soft, scientific comments) when they engage questions on her website.
Conclusion
More alarmist bullshit from known data fabricators and questionable laboratories, this time sadly targeting a crippled industry to continue their crusade against a company that sells corn and soybean seeds.
I'm glad this story hit with a whimper and didn't get much interest.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Zombie Cancer Rats Spread Fear
It is the zombie of the food activist world. It is really sad that images from a poorly constructed, massively criticized, non-reproduced claim connecting rats with tumors to GE crops continues to serve as their best argument against technology.
This image was taken by Dr. Prakash at the World Food Prize yesterday.
This image was taken by Dr. Prakash at the World Food Prize yesterday.
Don't forget to show the control! He get's tumors too.
Just like the activists that frighten parents from vaccines, these well-fed protesters seek to disable tools that help the American farmer and provide needed technology to the Developing World.
And the retracted paper that nobody repeated or believes, continues to influence the social acceptance of good technology.
I wrote about this in depth in a recent Medium piece.
Monday, October 16, 2017
TB 104 Post Harvest Solutions in Food Security
Grain or beans are harvested and dried, and then a race begins, as stored grains are prone to infestation with insects and fungi. Some fungal invasions produce aflatoxins, potent carcinogens.
Small farmers also sell grain, but when they are selling, so are their neighbors. Prices are low, and they frequently buy back their grain at a higher price.
The solution is effective storage, and hermetically sealed (airtight) storage retards the growth of any organism that could damage the seeds.
Today's podcast is about that storage. It is an interview with Brett Rierson and how different solutions are distributed by the World Food Programme.
It also reminds us that sometimes the best solution is the most low-tech solution.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Rethinking Communication- Ranchers, Beef Industry
I'm in Denver, CO, my flight is delayed, and I'm feeling exhausted. I really want to go home and I'm absolutely sick of traveling. But it is so worth it. Every week I look at the calendar with dread, but after every trip I'm grateful for the opportunity, and glad to meet so many wonderful people.
I was able to attend the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef Communicators Conference and it was an amazing morning. It was a small meeting of industry reps, producers and retailers. The central theme was the idea of sustainability-- a fuzzy term in many respects. We sometimes have a hard time defining it, but we know it when we see it.
I don't think this kind of thing would have happened even five years ago. The need for precise, honest and consistent messaging around the things ag does well has never been more important. Now farmers, ranchers, and associated industries are stepping into it, impressively.
There is a need for honest discussion about antibiotics, hormones, daily practices, environmental impacts and all of the good things ranchers do to facilitate animal care. The public has questions and is wondering who to trust.
The most wonderful thing about this conference was the consistency of the messaging, and the admission that years of not communicating and communicating incorrectly got us nowhere. It actually made things worse.
Over the last twelve years I've learned how to talk to a concerned public about agriculture. I made a lot of mistakes. The lessons learned along the way were really important. I've learned a lot, and listened to experts.
This was a meeting were I was brought in to inform, but I actually went home being the informed.
Today it is evident that we have all starting communicating out of a passion for spreading the truth about agriculture and science in general. We all took different paths, different journeys, but are arriving at the same place. It makes me happy to hear the concepts I've learned the hard way spoken by others in beautiful eloquence.
Are we getting somewhere? I think so.
After all I've been through in the last two years personally and professionally, getting to attend such events and see people taking leadership in agricultural communication brings me great joy. It is wonderful to see people stepping up to teach others about what we do, and more importantly why we do it.
I was able to attend the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef Communicators Conference and it was an amazing morning. It was a small meeting of industry reps, producers and retailers. The central theme was the idea of sustainability-- a fuzzy term in many respects. We sometimes have a hard time defining it, but we know it when we see it.
I don't think this kind of thing would have happened even five years ago. The need for precise, honest and consistent messaging around the things ag does well has never been more important. Now farmers, ranchers, and associated industries are stepping into it, impressively.
Really sweet to meet such wonderful professionals and see their efforts in helping us all be better communicators. The tweets were quite nice.
There is a need for honest discussion about antibiotics, hormones, daily practices, environmental impacts and all of the good things ranchers do to facilitate animal care. The public has questions and is wondering who to trust.
The most wonderful thing about this conference was the consistency of the messaging, and the admission that years of not communicating and communicating incorrectly got us nowhere. It actually made things worse.
Over the last twelve years I've learned how to talk to a concerned public about agriculture. I made a lot of mistakes. The lessons learned along the way were really important. I've learned a lot, and listened to experts.
This was a meeting were I was brought in to inform, but I actually went home being the informed.
Today it is evident that we have all starting communicating out of a passion for spreading the truth about agriculture and science in general. We all took different paths, different journeys, but are arriving at the same place. It makes me happy to hear the concepts I've learned the hard way spoken by others in beautiful eloquence.
Are we getting somewhere? I think so.
After all I've been through in the last two years personally and professionally, getting to attend such events and see people taking leadership in agricultural communication brings me great joy. It is wonderful to see people stepping up to teach others about what we do, and more importantly why we do it.
Sunday, October 8, 2017
The Misleading and Deceitful Ways of US-RTK
If you are unsure about genetic engineering or believe that food science is dangerous, please read the following. If you think scientists are paid dupes of industry and activists aren't, you see it is exactly the other way around. If you think US-RTK or the Organic Consumers Association are honest peddlers of the truth, please read objectively and reach out if you have any questions. This is important. Take it on with an open mind, and ask yourself, "Who is lying to me?" Thanks.
Conventional wisdom says that when someone is aggressively spreading false information about you, it is best to just let it slide. People are smart enough to figure it out, so just keep doing good work and let that speak for itself.
That's pretty much how I've been handling the inane criticism from US-RTK, Thacker, GM Watch and the rest of the web's libel artists. Why respond? Does anyone really care what they say? Not really. Their hate speech and falsehoods get a handful of retweets from folks that hate science and scientists. Their little echo hive feeds on itself. It is pretty simple.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) pays Gary Ruskin and Stacey Malkin, Carrie Gillam and probably Paul Thacker, to write false narratives to damage the reputations and steal the trust of scientists. I've been one of their main targets. Then they write about it, and OCA retweets and blogs about it.
In other words OCA pays for the hit job, RTK does the hit job, and then OCA says, "Wow what a scumbag!"
The other day US-RTK posted a story called "The Misleading and Deceitful Ways of Dr. Kevin Folta." For the most part it is just another boring assembly of two-year-old lies, zombied up again to trash a public scientist-- just because he effectively communicates science.
Let's look at it paragraph by paragraph. If you don't like me, don't like agriculture, or don't like genetic engineering, that's fine-- but read to understand how these organizations twist reality to harm others (at least they attempt to).
Ironically what you find is that USRTK and its lackeys are the ones that are misleading and deceitful. Here goes!
Exhibit 1. That's just the intro. I'm not commenting on the lawsuit. Plenty more on that another time.
Exhibit 2. Again, I'm not going to comment on the lawsuit. What I will comment are the last three paragraphs. According to all university records it is 100% verified that I, Kevin Folta, never received an "unrestricted grant" for $25,000. Those words were taken from a generic, boilerplate letter that was emailed to me from Monsanto when they made a $25,000 unrestricted (no strings attached, yay!) gift to a science communication program at my university. It was money to be used in training scientists how to talk to the public. That's what I do.
USRTK took the lines from a letter pulled from FOIA'd emails. They know that the original letter and check were returned to the company because the precise verbiage was wrong, and the actual donation to the university had the exactly language "unrestricted gift to be used for outreach."
They use the words from the first letter that were not accurate, and the letter that needed to be corrected before the university could accept anything as a no-strings-attached gift. But that's how they roll. Facts don't matter, it is what can be packaged in a damaging way. That's why they are being misleading and deceitful.
The proposal was not to "promote GMOs". The company wanted to know what I did in workshops, and the workshops talk about the technologies, strengths and limitations, and how we communicate the topics more effectively.
Ultimately after threats to my family, my lab and my own person the university moved its funds from my outreach program to a campus food charity (after Monsanto could not take them back). Not one cent was used. It would have been great if they could have been.
Exhibit 3. I have no connection to Monsanto for research or collaborations, never did. When they suggested making a donation to my outreach work I thought it was a great idea. I'm grateful to help people understand science communication and topics in biotech.
Yes, I absolutely did say that there would be a good return on investment. That's what I do. If someone trusts me enough to provide funding, resources or time to help me with science or communication, I absolutely deliver. Every cent of that $25,000 gift to my workshop program would have gone a long way, none to me personally ever. It would provide media for participants, coffee, sandwiches, and allow me to stay a night in a hotel room and cover Uber or whatever. It would have done a lot of good.
The note about "sign on to whatever you like or write whatever you like" is cherry-picked and shows you better than anything why you should not trust US-RTK or Stacey Malkan.
In 2014 there was a horribly false series of television commercials playing in Oregon before their vote on food labeling. It was misleading, false, and unfair. Many scientists were asked if they would be willing to participate in writing an Op-Ed or sign a petition objecting to the use of fear and false information to manipulate a vote.
I was happy to write about the misleading commercials or sign the petition. That is what the rest of the email shows. Malkan clearly lifts a sentence from context with the clear intent to harm a reputation and erode trust.
Again deceit and misleading information? She owns it.
Exhibit 4. Again, not exactly correct and I hate that I worded it this way. The bottom line is that if a faculty member receives a grant, there is money taken out by the university (indirect costs) between 12-55% of the money provided. That's why it was critical that this was a gift in terms of university accounting. There is no university overhead associated with the outreach workshops, so it is not necessary. "Not publicly noted" was a poor choice of words. Our university communications folks like to write about such things and I was not excited about that. Donors do not influence the messaging of my workshops, and I wanted to avoid that perception. Time would show that it was a wise move, because that's exactly what USRTK and others did.
Exhibit 5. USRTK loves the term "ghostwrite"- it is a rather damning allegation and they like to make it look like industry feeds academics false information to propagate. What does this mean?
It is more deceit and misleading information from USRTK and Stacey Malkan. Here's what really happened.
The website GMO Answers asked me and others to answer questions from the public. I was asked by someone at Ketchum Communications, the company running the website. I didn't ask or care if they worked with industry, I figured they were probably hired by industry to set up the site, but that's great-- the public needs a place to find legitimate science information and if companies paid for that, great. Better than the taxpayer paying for it.
I was assigned maybe two up front (I've answered about 70 total). I was unsure what the appropriate depth and scope would be, what is the target audience? I had no idea.
They sent me two sample answers. While they were generally factual and correct, I carefully edited them. I rearranged content, deleted, added, and reshaped the skeleton information to be my own work.
2+3=5. 3+2=5. The answer is the same, it is true. It was my answer, my work, and my words at the end. Since then, after RTK and others made such allegations, I sat with a blank sheet of paper and revised those two answers from scratch. Guess what? They say the same thing.
It was a mistake to even have them provide sample answers and then revising and rewriting them. Not because it was wrong, but because it gave unethical hate groups an easy allegation to make, and a way to harm a public scientist that only tried to help people understand science using a popular, well-constructed website.
Exhibit 6. This question came to me from GMO Answers and I wrote to our UF Sponsored Projects Office. I obtained a spreadsheet of all grants to the Horticultural Sciences Department, the department I'm in. I went through every page of the spreadsheet and found only that the only funds from Monsanto were to a faculty member in the panhandle at our North Florida Research and Education center. He received about $6-8k per year for research with glyphosate on sugar beets. That's it.
Now where does Stacey Malkan deceitfully mislead? I was correct, there were only $21,000 dollars in grants.
Note that she's talking about dollars to the "University of Florida Foundation." That is a separate business, donation, foundation arm of the university, not sponsored projects and research. Those funds go to other stuff I have no control over, things like building buildings, setting up faculty positions, other stuff I never see or don't even know about. If it funds research, it sure isn't mine.
So once again, they call me misleading and deceitful, while they are the ones bending information.
Exhibit 7. A faculty member at my university saw Dr. Rob Fraley from Monsanto give a talk and invited him to our university. He put me in charge of logistics (like I needed more work to do). Big deal. We have speakers at the university all the time, representing many ideas.
Yes, the stance on genetic engineering at universities is consistent with that of companies. It follows evidence.
Again, RTK and Malkan twist meanings to satisfy their slanderous agenda.
Exhibit 8. This is getting boring. I never knew exactly how these workshops were being funded, frankly didn't care. All I knew is that they were good collections of diverse voices to discuss the communication of science, particularly around biotechnology. In all of the investigations they performed they found out (with no resistance) that some of the funding comes from BIO (the Biotechnology Industry Association) which is a trade organization representing 550+ companies.
Again, how is this a bad thing? Getting experts together to discuss science and science communication is excellent, and if it can be done NOT at taxpayer expense, that's a good thing. Just because some industry trade organization provides some funds does not mean they control the message. And they don't.
(more)
I'm not sure how this is relevant to me. I attended. But this shows how USRTK and Stacy Malkan want to make any association between me and industry, no matter how tenuous it might be.
These were very nice conferences and I learned a lot.
Exhibit 9. (boring) Yes, I have described these people as Food Terrorists. Because that's what they do. They promote ideological change through coercion and fear, violence and misinformation. That's the definition of terrorism.
Exhibit 10. Again, cherry pick a few sentences from a long career of discussing pesticides. I understand these products and speak about them in strengths and limitations, risks and benefits. That's my job. The second bullet point is amazingly factual. The first bullet point is mostly true, as applicators are tested for exposure, especially for acetylcholine esterase activity. That's a sensitive measure of exposure.
That's science, not propaganda. Again, Stacy misleads and deceives.
Exhibit 11. Ah yes, the Vern Blazek Science Power Hour, a comedy parody of Coast-to-Coast AM, my first foray into podcasting when I didn't want to do a podcast. Actually I wanted to do a podcast, but didn't want to do it as myself. I don't like such spotlights and didn't want to take heat about overdue reports, overdue reviews and not enough time to take care of business. I work 100 hours a week. I did the VBSPH on my own time and just did it for fun.
I invited Brooke Borel onto the podcast as Kevin Folta, and told her that I'd do the interview in character. I asked her to talk about her book on bedbugs because it fit the quirky content of the podcast. It also was a little bit of an olive branch to Brooke. At a conference we didn't hit it off well. She said that once a scientist receives industry funds that you can't trust their work, and I really objected to that statement. We had a "spirited" discussion.
A month or so later I invited her to the podcast. Instead of declining or accepting, she claimed that it was highly deceptive and used the opportunity to write the Buzzfeed article about the "scandal" and then put a sexy hate catching title on the work:
In Conclusion:
It is sad that I had so spend an hour doing this, but I think it makes the point. US-RTK, Gary Ruskin and Stacey Malkan are the real deceivers and misleaders. If you have any other questions about any of their points, please send me a note and I'll be glad to talk to you about it.
And true to form, Ronnie Cummings, the man with the checkbook that finances USRTK's hate speech, chimes in on his blog, talking about the RTK shows how deceitful I am. Like Brooke Borel, he has to get "Monsanto Spokesman" in the title.
I research strawberry flavor. I research light in vertical farms. I work in a state that has almost no genetically engineered crops, maybe a little corn and cotton, but that's not even my department. Monsanto never funded my research, has no interest in my research.
It shows again who is really being misleading and deceitful.
Again, OCA funds the hit piece, USRTK writes a hit piece that is full of cherry-picked innuendo and false narrative, OCA writes about the "exposed" news that they funded in the first place.
If that isn't deception, not sure what else is.
Conventional wisdom says that when someone is aggressively spreading false information about you, it is best to just let it slide. People are smart enough to figure it out, so just keep doing good work and let that speak for itself.
That's pretty much how I've been handling the inane criticism from US-RTK, Thacker, GM Watch and the rest of the web's libel artists. Why respond? Does anyone really care what they say? Not really. Their hate speech and falsehoods get a handful of retweets from folks that hate science and scientists. Their little echo hive feeds on itself. It is pretty simple.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) pays Gary Ruskin and Stacey Malkin, Carrie Gillam and probably Paul Thacker, to write false narratives to damage the reputations and steal the trust of scientists. I've been one of their main targets. Then they write about it, and OCA retweets and blogs about it.
This is the level of loons we are dealing with here. It is ironic that my lab has been almost entirely funded for 15 years by state, federal and strawberry industry sources. This is their rhetoric, and to call it childish is an insult to children. This image was tweeted by Ronnie Cummings at OCA.
In other words OCA pays for the hit job, RTK does the hit job, and then OCA says, "Wow what a scumbag!"
The other day US-RTK posted a story called "The Misleading and Deceitful Ways of Dr. Kevin Folta." For the most part it is just another boring assembly of two-year-old lies, zombied up again to trash a public scientist-- just because he effectively communicates science.
Let's look at it paragraph by paragraph. If you don't like me, don't like agriculture, or don't like genetic engineering, that's fine-- but read to understand how these organizations twist reality to harm others (at least they attempt to).
Ironically what you find is that USRTK and its lackeys are the ones that are misleading and deceitful. Here goes!
Exhibit 1. That's just the intro. I'm not commenting on the lawsuit. Plenty more on that another time.
Exhibit 2. Again, I'm not going to comment on the lawsuit. What I will comment are the last three paragraphs. According to all university records it is 100% verified that I, Kevin Folta, never received an "unrestricted grant" for $25,000. Those words were taken from a generic, boilerplate letter that was emailed to me from Monsanto when they made a $25,000 unrestricted (no strings attached, yay!) gift to a science communication program at my university. It was money to be used in training scientists how to talk to the public. That's what I do.
USRTK took the lines from a letter pulled from FOIA'd emails. They know that the original letter and check were returned to the company because the precise verbiage was wrong, and the actual donation to the university had the exactly language "unrestricted gift to be used for outreach."
They use the words from the first letter that were not accurate, and the letter that needed to be corrected before the university could accept anything as a no-strings-attached gift. But that's how they roll. Facts don't matter, it is what can be packaged in a damaging way. That's why they are being misleading and deceitful.
The proposal was not to "promote GMOs". The company wanted to know what I did in workshops, and the workshops talk about the technologies, strengths and limitations, and how we communicate the topics more effectively.
Ultimately after threats to my family, my lab and my own person the university moved its funds from my outreach program to a campus food charity (after Monsanto could not take them back). Not one cent was used. It would have been great if they could have been.
Exhibit 3. I have no connection to Monsanto for research or collaborations, never did. When they suggested making a donation to my outreach work I thought it was a great idea. I'm grateful to help people understand science communication and topics in biotech.
Yes, I absolutely did say that there would be a good return on investment. That's what I do. If someone trusts me enough to provide funding, resources or time to help me with science or communication, I absolutely deliver. Every cent of that $25,000 gift to my workshop program would have gone a long way, none to me personally ever. It would provide media for participants, coffee, sandwiches, and allow me to stay a night in a hotel room and cover Uber or whatever. It would have done a lot of good.
The note about "sign on to whatever you like or write whatever you like" is cherry-picked and shows you better than anything why you should not trust US-RTK or Stacey Malkan.
In 2014 there was a horribly false series of television commercials playing in Oregon before their vote on food labeling. It was misleading, false, and unfair. Many scientists were asked if they would be willing to participate in writing an Op-Ed or sign a petition objecting to the use of fear and false information to manipulate a vote.
I was happy to write about the misleading commercials or sign the petition. That is what the rest of the email shows. Malkan clearly lifts a sentence from context with the clear intent to harm a reputation and erode trust.
Again deceit and misleading information? She owns it.
Exhibit 4. Again, not exactly correct and I hate that I worded it this way. The bottom line is that if a faculty member receives a grant, there is money taken out by the university (indirect costs) between 12-55% of the money provided. That's why it was critical that this was a gift in terms of university accounting. There is no university overhead associated with the outreach workshops, so it is not necessary. "Not publicly noted" was a poor choice of words. Our university communications folks like to write about such things and I was not excited about that. Donors do not influence the messaging of my workshops, and I wanted to avoid that perception. Time would show that it was a wise move, because that's exactly what USRTK and others did.
It is more deceit and misleading information from USRTK and Stacey Malkan. Here's what really happened.
The website GMO Answers asked me and others to answer questions from the public. I was asked by someone at Ketchum Communications, the company running the website. I didn't ask or care if they worked with industry, I figured they were probably hired by industry to set up the site, but that's great-- the public needs a place to find legitimate science information and if companies paid for that, great. Better than the taxpayer paying for it.
I was assigned maybe two up front (I've answered about 70 total). I was unsure what the appropriate depth and scope would be, what is the target audience? I had no idea.
They sent me two sample answers. While they were generally factual and correct, I carefully edited them. I rearranged content, deleted, added, and reshaped the skeleton information to be my own work.
2+3=5. 3+2=5. The answer is the same, it is true. It was my answer, my work, and my words at the end. Since then, after RTK and others made such allegations, I sat with a blank sheet of paper and revised those two answers from scratch. Guess what? They say the same thing.
It was a mistake to even have them provide sample answers and then revising and rewriting them. Not because it was wrong, but because it gave unethical hate groups an easy allegation to make, and a way to harm a public scientist that only tried to help people understand science using a popular, well-constructed website.
Exhibit 6. This question came to me from GMO Answers and I wrote to our UF Sponsored Projects Office. I obtained a spreadsheet of all grants to the Horticultural Sciences Department, the department I'm in. I went through every page of the spreadsheet and found only that the only funds from Monsanto were to a faculty member in the panhandle at our North Florida Research and Education center. He received about $6-8k per year for research with glyphosate on sugar beets. That's it.
Now where does Stacey Malkan deceitfully mislead? I was correct, there were only $21,000 dollars in grants.
Note that she's talking about dollars to the "University of Florida Foundation." That is a separate business, donation, foundation arm of the university, not sponsored projects and research. Those funds go to other stuff I have no control over, things like building buildings, setting up faculty positions, other stuff I never see or don't even know about. If it funds research, it sure isn't mine.
So once again, they call me misleading and deceitful, while they are the ones bending information.
Exhibit 7. A faculty member at my university saw Dr. Rob Fraley from Monsanto give a talk and invited him to our university. He put me in charge of logistics (like I needed more work to do). Big deal. We have speakers at the university all the time, representing many ideas.
Yes, the stance on genetic engineering at universities is consistent with that of companies. It follows evidence.
Again, RTK and Malkan twist meanings to satisfy their slanderous agenda.
Exhibit 8. This is getting boring. I never knew exactly how these workshops were being funded, frankly didn't care. All I knew is that they were good collections of diverse voices to discuss the communication of science, particularly around biotechnology. In all of the investigations they performed they found out (with no resistance) that some of the funding comes from BIO (the Biotechnology Industry Association) which is a trade organization representing 550+ companies.
Again, how is this a bad thing? Getting experts together to discuss science and science communication is excellent, and if it can be done NOT at taxpayer expense, that's a good thing. Just because some industry trade organization provides some funds does not mean they control the message. And they don't.
(more)
I'm not sure how this is relevant to me. I attended. But this shows how USRTK and Stacy Malkan want to make any association between me and industry, no matter how tenuous it might be.
These were very nice conferences and I learned a lot.
Exhibit 9. (boring) Yes, I have described these people as Food Terrorists. Because that's what they do. They promote ideological change through coercion and fear, violence and misinformation. That's the definition of terrorism.
Exhibit 10. Again, cherry pick a few sentences from a long career of discussing pesticides. I understand these products and speak about them in strengths and limitations, risks and benefits. That's my job. The second bullet point is amazingly factual. The first bullet point is mostly true, as applicators are tested for exposure, especially for acetylcholine esterase activity. That's a sensitive measure of exposure.
That's science, not propaganda. Again, Stacy misleads and deceives.
Exhibit 11. Ah yes, the Vern Blazek Science Power Hour, a comedy parody of Coast-to-Coast AM, my first foray into podcasting when I didn't want to do a podcast. Actually I wanted to do a podcast, but didn't want to do it as myself. I don't like such spotlights and didn't want to take heat about overdue reports, overdue reviews and not enough time to take care of business. I work 100 hours a week. I did the VBSPH on my own time and just did it for fun.
I invited Brooke Borel onto the podcast as Kevin Folta, and told her that I'd do the interview in character. I asked her to talk about her book on bedbugs because it fit the quirky content of the podcast. It also was a little bit of an olive branch to Brooke. At a conference we didn't hit it off well. She said that once a scientist receives industry funds that you can't trust their work, and I really objected to that statement. We had a "spirited" discussion.
A month or so later I invited her to the podcast. Instead of declining or accepting, she claimed that it was highly deceptive and used the opportunity to write the Buzzfeed article about the "scandal" and then put a sexy hate catching title on the work:
True Confessions of a Monsanto Apologist? Really? Clearly a hit job and retribution for our earlier conversation, she played up the marginal associations between me and a company in an unfair and derogatory way, maximizing damage at every turn.
I don't use the word often, but I hate her for this. I don't even hate Gary and Stacey, they're just stooges that think they are doing the right thing, and time has shown that they are basically irrelevant and ineffective in changing anything with their smear.
But Brooke knew exactly what she was doing. She's not stupid. She knew that a rabid anti-science movement, fresh off of a New York Times hit piece, would probably kill me or destroy what was left of my career-- it was a calculated, carefully devised move. She didn't have to do it, and two years later-- she looks really bad for doing it. She lost a lot of respect from scientists for this. Good.
Later she would change the title to "Seed Money." Once she put out the clickbait and harm me, she dialed it back and played dumb. She is a total manipulator, and in my mind one of the most disgusting players in this conversation.
Changed title, inflammatory story-- deceitful and misleading?
It is sad that I had so spend an hour doing this, but I think it makes the point. US-RTK, Gary Ruskin and Stacey Malkan are the real deceivers and misleaders. If you have any other questions about any of their points, please send me a note and I'll be glad to talk to you about it.
And true to form, Ronnie Cummings, the man with the checkbook that finances USRTK's hate speech, chimes in on his blog, talking about the RTK shows how deceitful I am. Like Brooke Borel, he has to get "Monsanto Spokesman" in the title.
I research strawberry flavor. I research light in vertical farms. I work in a state that has almost no genetically engineered crops, maybe a little corn and cotton, but that's not even my department. Monsanto never funded my research, has no interest in my research.
It shows again who is really being misleading and deceitful.
Again, OCA funds the hit piece, USRTK writes a hit piece that is full of cherry-picked innuendo and false narrative, OCA writes about the "exposed" news that they funded in the first place.
If that isn't deception, not sure what else is.
Thursday, October 5, 2017
The Rats that Kill
How can a scientific paper have a body count? When it successfully maligns a technology and influences policy decisions. Looking back five years now at Seralini et al., 2012, a paper that instilled fear, influenced policy, and permanently shapes public opinion on the internet-- despite never being replicated or expanded.
Here is my discussion on Medium.
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This is likely one of the worst papers ever to be published. However, to some, it is stellar evidence. Here's one website ... -
It was 6:30 pm in the lab and I was just thinking about the last things I'd need to get done before I could go home. Typical night. Us... -
School lunches might not be the perfect sustenance, I don't know. When I was in school the institutionalized food was a weird combinat...
